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Dessert

Tapioca Pudding

A sweet pudding made from soaked tapioca, milk, sugar, egg yolks, and vanilla, topped with whipped egg whites and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Tapioca Pudding

Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Tapioca Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tapioca

  1. Soak the tapioca in cold water overnight, then drain.

  2. Add the new milk and sugar to the tapioca.

Make the pudding

  1. Place in a double boiler and stir until boiling hot.

  2. Add the beaten yolks thinned with a little milk and stir for one minute.

  3. Set the mixture in cold water and stir to prevent curdling.

  4. Flavor with vanilla and pour into a pudding dish.

Top and serve

  1. Whip the egg whites with 2 teaspoons of sugar and spread over the pudding.

  2. Sprinkle granulated sugar on top and brown in the oven.

  3. Serve cold with a spoonful of cream in each dish.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Vanilla + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Tapioca
Swells and thickens the milk as it cooks, giving the pudding its body.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and enrich it with richness and a smooth texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the pudding and gives it creaminess.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the sugared topping brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Adding the beaten yolks. Egg yolks can curdle if they meet very hot mixture too quickly. Thinning them with a little milk and stirring for a minute, then setting the pudding in cold water, helps keep the custard smooth.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

More tapioca pudding recipes

Apple 146Cream 36Pineapple 22Lemon 21Peach 15Baked 14 See all 530 →

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